\u201cDr Crane, your glockenspiel has sprung to life!\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a crush. An unexpected one. The psychiatrist Niles Crane (snooty, conflict-avoidant, married to a high-society wife with a fear of buffets) fell for his father\u2019s physio, Daphne Moon (working class, Mancunian, reckons she\u2019s a bit psychic) the moment he met her<\/a> in his brother\u2019s Seattle apartment.<\/p>\n Across seven seasons of the mega-sitcom Frasier<\/a>, the crush took hold. Daphne remained seemingly oblivious, but the pair built a friendship and a will-they-won\u2019t-they story that fans loved to be teased with. It made for some cracking episodes: from the pair being holed up in Niles\u2019 candlelit mansion during a rainstorm (with that broken glockenspiel) in the side-splitting A Mid-Winter Night\u2019s Dream, to a passionate leg-in-the-air tango after Niles\u2019 divorce in Moon Dance (\u201cOh mama, I\u2019ve got it all!\u201d).<\/p>\n And the dish ran away with the spoon \u2026 Niles and Daphne in Frasier. Photograph: Getty Images<\/p>\n Daphne finally learned the truth the night before her wedding to Donny. The next morning, in her white gown, she knocked on the Winnebago in which Niles (four days into a bad new marriage himself) was hiding and told him to drive.<\/p>\n \u201cFasten your seatbelt, Daphne.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFasten yours, Niles.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s been 22 years since we last saw the pair on screen, but the stars Jane Leeves and David Hyde Pierce remain dear friends. Hyde Pierce attended \u2013 and had a near fatal car accident at \u2013 Leeves\u2019 English wedding and he is godfather to her son. They are both in long-term marriages: Hyde Pierce and the writer-producer Brian Hargrove married in 2008 after 25 years together; Leeves and the TV executive Marshall Coben have been married for 30 years. In fact, John Mahoney, who played Marty Crane in Frasier, predicted Leeves\u2019 relationship one day in the green room: \u201cI always wanted kids and said to John: \u2018I\u2019m going to adopt,\u2019\u201d she remembers. \u201cHe said: \u2018Do not do that now. Within a year, you will meet someone.\u2019 And she did, at a Paramount party. \u201cI don\u2019t know how that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n In the chair \u2026 Leeves and Hyde Pierce backstage on Frasier. Photograph: Courtesy of Jane Leeves<\/p>\n \u201cI love you doing this,\u201d Leeves laughs from her Malibu kitchen, as Hyde Pierce joins from a study (which features a bookcase Niles would be proud of) in his New York home. He claims to have just had his hair done \u2013 endearingly, he\u2019s a bit frazzled \u2013 before asking for reassurance that no one will see this video. They\u2019re more than happy, though, to tell the story of Daphne and Niles.<\/p>\n Do you remember meeting for the first time?<\/p>\n Jane Leeves: I was on the set on the first day of the pilot and I saw David walking in and crossing the bleachers. I went racing up to him like a mad fan because I\u2019d been watching [the Washington-DC-based sitcom] The Powers That Be, which was cancelled for some bizarre reason \u2013 it was brilliant and he played the most odd and fabulous character. I don\u2019t think you really had any dialogue, did you?<\/p>\n David Hyde Pierce: No, I played a suicidal congressman who only mumbled.<\/p>\n JL: I thought there was a calmness, a kindness and an intellect that was devastatingly sexy, I have to say.<\/p>\n DHP: Well, I thought: I can\u2019t believe Paramount Studios doesn\u2019t have security \u2026 No, I realised that I lucked out getting the best loon in the business.<\/p>\n JL: A couple of lunatics.<\/p>\n DHP: I knew her from Seinfeld and Murphy Brown \u2013 another show from the dark ages. And we just felt like kindred spirits. It\u2019s safe to say that was true of the whole cast. They put a real family together.<\/p>\n JL: It was extraordinary, because I was the only person at that first table read who had read with Kelsey [Grammer]. So the chemistry was unknown.<\/p>\n \u2018You were pulling my tie and I liked it\u2019 \u2026 David Hyde Pierce and Jane Leeves in Frasier. Photograph: Landmark Media\/Alamy<\/p>\n DHP: Also, we did a photoshoot before the pilot and I remember Jane saying something about how there could be just a little something between us, and we ended up leaning on each other.<\/p>\n JL: I was pulling your tie.<\/p>\n DHP: Yes, and I liked it.<\/p>\n JL: The idea came into my head that they were polar opposites and it would be funny if he found her attractive \u2013 because she was also the opposite of Maris.<\/p>\n What was your real relationship like off camera?<\/p>\n JL: Contentious.<\/p>\n DHP: A lot of sex.<\/p>\n JL: I love David. He\u2019s a true gentleman in every sense of the word and the finest human being you\u2019ll ever meet.<\/p>\n DHP: It was as it is now. We\u2019re just best friends. Jane and her husband, Marshall, rented this wonderful shack near the ocean in Malibu. My husband and I, and our dog, would go over and stay. When they moved on, they talked to the landlord about us taking over the rental and we did that. We were very close.<\/p>\n JL: John Mahoney was asking me for my parents\u2019 address [in East Grinstead, West Sussex] one time \u2013 he wanted to send them a card \u2013 and I read it out. And David went: \u201cMuffin-on-Poot?\u201d and the whole room just fell apart.<\/p>\n DHP: As a person from the US, everything is \u201csomething-upon-something\u201d in the UK. That one just occurred to me and it seemed to stick. But it was with great affection.<\/p>\n What do Daphne and Niles love about each other?<\/p>\n DHP: For Niles, Daphne is far and above the most beautiful woman he\u2019s ever seen in his life. Whatever aura she gives off just mesmerises him: her personality, the scent of her hair. He\u2019s bewitched. He also thinks she\u2019s completely beyond him, like a creature from another planet or from mythology or the woodlands or something. The fact that the relationship impossibly comes together is a beautiful surprise for him.<\/p>\n JL: For Daphne, it\u2019s the kindness and gentleness. He\u2019s so different from any man she\u2019s ever experienced. She came from a family with seven brothers, these brutes, so to find that a man could be kind, an intellectual \u2026 it\u2019s the same thing for her, it\u2019s this magical man in front of her.<\/p>\n Groovy, baby \u2026 Daphne go-go dances her way into Niles\u2019s dreams, wearing Donny\u2019s mother\u2019s old wedding dress. Photograph: Courtesy of Jane Leeves<\/p>\n We kept the suspense of the Niles attraction to Daphne going for years and people often ask me: \u201cWhy did she not know?\u201d Yes, part of her thought that [he liked her], but the other part of her would say: \u201cOh, what are you talking about? He\u2019s married and look where you come from and look who he is. He\u2019s a doctor, for goodness sake.\u201d And that voice in the back of her head is what made sense of that seven years of longing.<\/p>\n DHP: The tango in Moon Dance was amazing.<\/p>\n JL: We rehearsed at lightning speed for that. [The episode was written for the pair last minute as Grammer was on \u201cblue flu\u201d strike to negotiate his contract. Unusually, eight of the show\u2019s writers each wrote a part of the script. Grammer returned in time to direct and appear in short scenes.] We had to rehearse with a choreographer. I remember going to David\u2019s house, because we were loving it so much, to rehearse at the weekend. [The director] Jimmy Burrows would have been appalled.<\/p>\n It takes two \u2026 the tango scene.<\/p>\n DHP: Our late, great director was famous for not wanting people to rehearse because he had such a keen sense of the rehearsal timeframe of a situation comedy, which is not like rehearsing for a play that\u2019s going to run for months. Even the dog [Moose, who played Eddie] suffered if he learned the trick too soon \u2013 it would be ruined and he wouldn\u2019t be able to recreate it in front of the live audience. Jimmy was very big on: \u201cDon\u2019t think it out too much beforehand, because it will blossom at the right moment.\u201d<\/p>\n JL: I love the scene between us [in Mixed Doubles] when Daphne has been dating a Niles lookalike \u2013 he breaks up with her and runs off with Niles\u2019 date \u2013 and Niles comes to tell Daphne. There\u2019s a wonderful, sweet, gentle scene between them, like shades of Casablanca. [\u201cIf it\u2019d been a different time in both our lives, we might actually have met. How do you suppose that would have gone?\u201d Daphne asks him. \u201cI would have said: \u2018What are you doing for the rest of your life?\u2019\u201d he replies. They both, as friends, say they love each other.] It was such great writing \u2013 these writers were real romantics.<\/p>\n Is there anything you wish Daphne and Niles had done differently?<\/p>\n JL: Seven years is a long time and I think the audience was sort of begging to please bring this to a conclusion.<\/p>\n DHP: I think we all felt we had played that \u201cthese two people didn\u2019t think they deserved each other and didn\u2019t believe that they could ever end up with each other\u201d and there comes a point where you just stop believing that.<\/p>\n A love story for the ages \u2026 Leeves and Hyde Pierce preparing on set. Photograph: Courtesy of Jane Leeves<\/p>\n One thing that the writers did very smartly: they got us together before people were tired of the suspense. I remember very well \u2013 speaking of moments that stick with me \u2013 when we kissed in front of the live audience. They lost their minds. That was the moment we finally came together. The creators also knew when to end the series; they ended it before any of us were ready. They didn\u2019t want it to dribble off and have the network or the studio say: \u201cYeah, you\u2019re done.\u201d They wanted to be able to craft a final season. So I don\u2019t know if there are things we wish they did, but I do think those two things were handled really well.<\/p>\n JL: The only thing I wish had been handled differently was the hiding of my first pregnancy. But those were different times. [When Leeves came back from hiatus, she was pregnant with her first child. Her bump was hidden in the series and in later episodes she was given a weight-gain storyline and sent to a \u201cfat camp\u201d.] Daphne and Niles had just got together. I came back and I was pregnant \u2013 and they probably thought it was too early for Daphne to be pregnant and they wanted to explore this relationship. But then again, it might have been interesting if she was!<\/p>\n DHP: I\u2019ve never thought of that, Jane, that\u2019s interesting, so off the rails: the idea that we see them run off together at the end of a season and when they come back they\u2019re having a baby.<\/p>\n When did you realise this was a love story for the ages?Love at first sight \u2026 Niles meets Daphne.<\/p>\n DHP: I don\u2019t know if I ever did think of it as a love story for the ages \u2026 love story for the agents?<\/p>\n JL: There was an episode or two of Niles and Daphne every season. They were always such great fun. It wasn\u2019t until season two that I realised this thing has legs. Niles\u2019 reaction to Daphne in the room added another layer to Frasier\u2019s apartment; there was this pushback between Niles, Frasier and their dad, and then Daphne comes in and there\u2019s a whole other thing going on. But yeah, by season two, I realised that they were mining this.<\/p>\n DHP: One of the cool things about it, too, was that it\u2019s such sophisticated writing: knowing not to say anything when you have set up a dynamic between two characters. The whole audience knows, when Daphne walks into a room, exactly what Niles is thinking. And, eventually, vice versa. There could be comedy there, it could be poignant, it could be a million things \u2013 but it was not a show where it was a joke a minute, getting three jokes on the page. It was a different style. That\u2019s between all the characters, in some ways. You got to know us so well.<\/p>\n What does romance mean to you and how romantic are you in real life?<\/p>\n JL: Oh my goodness. It\u2019s friendship, it\u2019s respect, it\u2019s love. And admiration. I admire my husband, I admire his character. He\u2019s my best friend. And he\u2019s hot. That helps.<\/p>\n DHP: Are you talking about my husband or your husband?<\/p>\n JL: Oh, both of them, darling.<\/p>\n DHP: All of those things. I was thinking about both Niles and Daphne on the show, and me and Brian, or Jane and Marshall \u2013 what is romance? It\u2019s a poetic thing. I think it\u2019s possibility. Even having been together for ever, there\u2019s just this air of possibility that the whole world has, because you are together.<\/p>\n JL: I think I know what you\u2019re saying: being with the right person seems to make everything possible.<\/p>\n DHP: Yeah.<\/p>\n Hyde Pierce at the christening of Leeves\u2019 son. Photograph: Courtesy of Jane Leeves<\/p>\n JL: You\u2019ve got a good one, too.<\/p>\n DHP: I agree.<\/p>\n What has been the most intense fan reaction to Daphne and Niles?<\/p>\n JL: We\u2019ve always had such respectful fans. I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s been a wild one!<\/p>\n DHP: One of my favourite was in the States when the show first started to air. It was at a set time on a Thursday night or a Tuesday night: therefore, the people who wanted to watch Frasier watched it because they knew when it was on. But then there was a point where it went into syndication, which meant suddenly it was on reruns. I remember walking down the street in New York City. A garbage truck drove by and one of the guys hanging off the truck shouted: \u201cYo, Niles!\u201d And I thought: oh, there\u2019s a whole new audience getting to see the show.<\/p>\n